Eko Eko Azarak: Wizard of Darkness (1995)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Tsuburaya Eizo

RUNTIME: 82 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: A mysterious new transfer student shows up at a high school where people have recently started dying. That night, when 13 students are staying late in the school, they get trapped in their school with unseen magical forces killing them off one-by-one, and it's up to Misa Kuroi, the mysterious new girl, to protect them and put a stop to the supernatural events.

REVIEW: Let me start this by saying that Eko Eko Azarak: Wizard of Darkness is a Japanese movie, and not one with an English Dub available for it, so if you're not the kind of person that likes to read subtitles while watching a movie then I'm telling you up front - this movie isn't for you. But if having to read subtitles doesn't faze you, then by all means, continue on.

I wasn't too sure what to expect when I first popped this movie in. I love all horror movies, no matter what country they're originally from, and some of the more well-known Asian horror movies, I've really enjoyed, such as Ringu (The Ring), Ju-On (The Grudge), Kairo (Pulse), and Chakushin Ari (One Missed Call) to name some. However this was a movie I had heard zip on before being told about it, and upon looking online I saw that it was a rather nearly-unheard of low budget affair and thus I didn't really know what to expect from it (though I did notice that it seems to have a small cult following).

It starts off with a scene of robed figures in some dim candle-lit room, chanting while doing bad things to a voodoo doll, inter-cut with a woman running and screaming through the streets at night, complete with overly-dramatic and cheesy 'intense' music. In pure Omen-fashion, an 'accident' occurs that results in a thick steel girder falling on her and crushing her head just as one of the robed figures slams a knife down onto the head of the voodoo doll. It's later revealed in the movie that this was the 5th person to mysteriously die in the last several nights, and one of the students pieces together with a map that if you join the areas where they died, it forms a giant pentagram and smack dab in the middle is their high school. These students instantly start casting suspicion on the mysterious new student, Misa Kuroi who seems to know a thing or two about magic. As the movie goes on, they discover a plot to resurrect Lucifer, in which after the pentagram of sacrifices is complete, thirteen more sacrifices are needed within the giant pentagram in order to complete the spell. It’s not long before twelve of the students are magically trapped in the school for the night with Misa, and things go from already-bad to terrifying. Not including the deaths (I'll get to those later), they're pursued by a handful of other creepy supernatural situations that includes, but is not limited to, an invisible barrier surrounding the school that prevents them from leaving, doors slamming open and shut on their own, a student getting possessed, geysers of water shooting up out of the toilet and bathroom sinks, and a number written on the chalkboard that seems to count down on its own as each person dies.

Of the roster of the 'main' 12 or so students, a few of them get decent characterization that lifts them up a bit from the others, but most are virtually ignored and regulated to forgettable background characters that get just one or two lines, if even that, and are then offed and due to that, it's very easy to get all the various characters confused and mixed up, but it's also a bit understandable considering that the movie is barely 80 minutes, so there's far too little time to waste on giving so many people decent characterization. Of the few that do get characterization, only one or two of those actually have you care about what happens to them and the other couple you almost want to see get killed due to their level of annoyance or unlikable personalities. Even Misa herself, the title character, seems to only have minimum characterization, but I'm willing to forgive that seeing as how much of the movie is shown to us through the point-of-view of the students thrust into a situation they can't comprehend, and so we mostly see Misa through their eyes and she purposely stays distant from them as this is 'just another job' for her and she doesn't want to get attached to anyone (something that despite her attempt, she fails at), because people who get close to her end up dying. But don't get me wrong, when the character does show emotion and freaks out a little, it really shows that the actress has some good acting chops and really can do a range of emotions, so when the character is being a bit monotone or distant, it's not due to the fault of the actress but the way the character was purposely-written.

One of the other female students that gets a bit of characterization as it turns out, is in 'a relationship' with a female teacher, but nothing whatsoever is done with this in the movie other then to have a really pointless, out-of-nowhere 5 minute-long lesbian sex scene, and then that 'sub plot', if it can be called that, is dropped again shortly after. Now I like my lesbian sex scenes as much as the next straight guy (The one in Bitch Slap is the stuff of legends), but I also like a coherent story. If I want pointless lesbian sex scenes that has nothing to do with the story or the characters, I'd rent a porno (I hear Lord of the Thongs is available). It wouldn't even be that bad if they continued injecting that aspect of the plot throughout the rest of the movie so it wouldn't have been so pointless, but they don't – it gets mentioned by a couple characters near the beginning as a rumor, it gets confirmed to us by way of the random sex scene, there's one line about it a scene or two later, and then nothing else is ever said or shown on the matter for the rest of the movie. And it goes on way too long. I think at least 5 minutes is the runtime on that scene, and it got a bit tedious and was probably the first and only time I've wanted to out and out skip a sex scene in a movie.

Another annoying aspect is that after getting trapped in the school, despite seeing with their own eyes that when someone goes off alone they get killed, several times in the movie various students still keep wanting to go off on their own or separate from the group because they think that Misa, after they find out she's a witch and people have died at all her old schools, is the one doing the black magic spells (despite the fact that she's been there with them the entire time and thus they saw with their own eyes that it can't be her). They end up leaving to go out on their own in a huff, and it makes no sense at all considering everything that's happened and continues to happen in the movie. And this doesn't happen just once, nor even twice. Oh no, it happens three times. Though one of those times, Misa isn't the one being accused and instead it's one of the other students but still, it's the exact same plot device used three separate times, and all three times it makes no sense other then to serve the script when it reaches a point where it's been several minutes without a gory death and the movie needs another, so it has to separate one or two people from the pack.

Adding to the whole 'random things happen for no reason other then to serve the script' argument, near the beginning of the movie, it's established that a bunch of other people in the school seem to dabble in real magic and treats it as if it's a normal regular occurrence that everyone dabbles in it. It made no sense, especially since once again it's pretty much completely dropped after the first few scenes of it, and it served no purpose other then to make just about everyone a suspect when the shit hits the fan.

The movie also tries too hard to make the viewer think early-on that Misa may be the one responsible, when she obviously isn't since she's portrayed as the hero of the movie in all the advertisements, previews, and even on the front cover. She IS a witch, yes, but she's a good witch that uses black magic to hunt evil witches and put a stop to their dastardly plans. Although that's pretty much void for 95% of the movie as due to a curse caused by the hidden evil witches, she's drained of all her powers for the majority of the flick, making me wonder why they even bothered to add the interesting-but-hardly-used subplot of her having magical powers.

And speaking of the evil witches – the beginning scene showed an entire group of evil hooded witches, yet come the end there's far less then that (to reveal how many would reveal how many of the main characters are in fact evil, but for the purpose of the rest of this review I'll refer to the killer(s) as a single entity), and there's no explanation given as to what happened to all the rest – one can assume they're all still out there somewhere, free to continue their evil witch ways; after that initial first scene, they're never seen nor heard-tell of again, so they seem to be a loose plot thread completely dropped from the movie after the first three minutes. Just one more in a long list of plot threads introduced in the movie only to be dropped and forgotten about.

Now up to this point I've been mostly harsh on the movie, and you may think I didn't like it, and while it's true that it's a far cry from perfect and it has quite a lot of glaring faults – overall I really did enjoy it. While most of the movie is done with oldskool practical effects, with the result being some nice and creepy visuals, there is two or three CGI shots present, and while one of the major ones looked pretty goofy and cheesy as a character starts disintegrating like sand and gets blown away, the other - a giant CGI Lucifer - actually looked pretty good.

The death scenes as well, despite some looking very cheesy in a low budget 90's kind of way, were really intense and were well-done with the practical effects, and thankfully it didn't hold back on the drippy red stuff. There are plenty of awesome and inventive death scenes to be found in this movie, with my personal favorite being this one scene were five students are all offed at once while trapped in a classroom and we witness the entire thing from outside the room, hearing their screams and panicked cries as the lights inside the room flicker on and off rapidly and large amounts of blood occasionally splash and smear against the foggy windows, leaving it entirely up to our imaginations as to exactly how they were being mutilated. Luckily we do see most of the movie's deaths on-screen, but when there's even just one horrifying scene like that where it happens off-screen and it's up to our own imaginations as to what happened, well that's more terrifying then anything that could have been shown.

Which leads into one of my favorite aspects of the movie and the thing it does the best – the director of this flick understands and knows how to do really good creepy atmosphere. Right from the opening seconds of the movie to when the credits role at the end, there's an uneasy feeling about everything that just eats away inside of you, just below the surface, and it crescendos during the thick of the movie as people are being offed left, right, and center, but even after the baddie of the day is defeated and Lucifer is back in Hell, that uneasy feeling still lingers. A lot of different aspects contribute to that, the first being the entire idea of black magic; It means someone can kill you and do nasty things to you from a far distance, while in the safety and comfort of pretty much anywhere, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. They can strike whenever, and do whatever to you and you're 100% helpless to stop it; it's just a matter of waiting until it happens. Another contributing factor is the setting; I always enjoy it when horror movies take place inside a dark and creepy school. It's one of my personal favorite horror movie settings and works even better in those huge Japanese academy kind of schools.

At first I had the identity of the killer written under negative things due to how horribly predictable and lame it was, but then the movie pulled a fast one over on me and completely changed it's tune with one last twist that I admit, I did not see coming but I did really love and made me enjoy the reveal of the killer way more then before. This is also probably one of the times I've seen villains come the closest to winning, before having victory snatched from their grasp. The movie genuinely had me thinking that the bad guy was actually going to win in this one because I just didn't see any possible way for Misa to get out of her...um...predicament (if it can be called that). Suffice to say, she does, but even after seeing the movie multiple times I'm still a bit confused on exactly what happened in that scene and how Misa got herself out of it.

To hammer in the point that this isn't some feel-good happy-ending kind of movie, and the final contribution to the never-ending uneasiness you feel while watching (and this constitutes MAJOR SPOILER territory so you may want to skip this paragraph if you haven't seen the movie yet but you plan to, and you're against that sort of thing): No one survives except Misa. Not one single person. It was a nice and unexpected change of pace from how movies like this normally end, where at least one or two others are saved and walk off together into the sunset, having a good 'ol laugh. Even in the end, after Misa regains her powers, stops the bad guy, and saves the day - even after her tough exterior is finally broken away and she starts to become genuine friends with some of these people during their night of terror together – she is the sole survivor, after just having had to watch those she didn't want to get close to but did, die in front of her eyes, further re-instating just exactly why she shouldn't allow herself to become close to anyone. Even in the face of victory, there's a depressing, lonely, and even cold atmosphere surrounding it and the movie ends with Misa walking away down the road towards her next assignment, leaving as mysteriously as she appeared...once again alone.

Those final moments show us, more then anything else in the movie, exactly just the kind of life Misa has to live and why she has to be so cold and distant and not get close to anyone. And if anyone is still unsatisfied with the level of characterization for her in this movie and they want more, well fear not as you can just move on to the second movie, Eko Eko Azarak 2: Birth of the Wizard, since it's a prequel about Misa's discovery of her powers and the events that began her journey down this path, and the Misa in that movie is very much a different version of the character, from before her life was tipped upside down and what she thought she knew of the world was shattered - back when she was just another innocent teenager with no worries in the world.

The musical score is mostly really good as well. There are a couple times it's way overly-dramatic to the point of laugh-out-loud cheese, but most of the time it's somber and dreary, and very fitting for the tone of the movie. The haunting main theme especially drives that point home, and is a perfect match for the character of Misa, portraying in music everything that makes that character who she is.

Even though this film was fairly low budget and a bit on the cheesy side at times, and aspects of the script really annoyed me, it’s still overall a pretty enjoyable B-movie from Japan, that has a great gloomy atmosphere about it, with awesome gory death scenes, and some really well-executed scenes of supernatural-happenings to satisfy any lover of the genre. Even most of the negative aspects seem to bother me less and less upon repeat viewings and the movie just gets better each time I watch it. If I had to quickly describe this movie in one sentence to a possible interested-party, it would probably be this: Picture a feature-length, R-Rated, episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that centers around Willow instead of Buffy, mixed with a really dark adult version of Harry Potter.

7/10 rooms in the Psych Ward


Now, I want to take a minute to talk about the Special Features found on this DVD, just because I was incredibly impressed by them. For a movie that you'd find in the $4.99 bin at Wal-Mart, if you can even find it at all, they certainly put some good effort into the features. Alongside the theatrical trailer we have Making Of, which while I normally skip those these days since they're all pretty much the same, I really dug this one because you get a good look at the difference in cultures between America and Japan, and the things Japan does differently when making a movie compared to America (In one shot in particular, we see everyone doing a quick religious ceremony before they start filming for the day), but not everything is different as we also get to see plenty of footage of the cast goofing around and having just plain ol' fun while making the movie, and of course we're privy to how they pulled off some of the more elaborate special effects and death scenes.

After that we have footage from the World Film Premier with all the main cast and crew in attendance and answering press and fan questions alike, and again it seemed like everyone was really enjoying being there – both those who made the movie and those that were there to view it. It seemed like even before the movie came out there was a large and eager fanbase for it in Japan. Finally we have a decent-length retrospective Sit-Down Interview with the female director and the main actress who played Misa Kuroi as they remember back on the entire experience and give lots of insightful information and plenty of funny behind-the-scenes stories, during which we learn that the the annoying barely-there lesbian 'sub plot' and the out-of-nowhere pointless lesbian sex scene was only put in because the Company Suits forced the director to include that and she almost walked away from the movie in defiance, but ultimately didn't. Also included are stories of some pretty creepy mysterious going-ons that seemed to plague the filming, especially around the times that the lead actress had to cite the main Eko Eko Azarak chant (which, like all the magical incantations present in the movie, is a real Pagan chant). Over all, I'd say this retrospective interview was better and more informative then most Commentary tracks tend to be.

All in all, this DVD has a full set of really interesting features, all of which are subtitled, that I had a blast going through, and felt deserved its own little section here to be mentioned in.

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100 Million BC (2008)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: The Asylum

RUNTIME: 85 mins

FORMAT: Netflix

PLOT: When the U.S. Military re-opens the Philadelphia Experiment, a group of scientists get sent through time and trapped back in the prehistoric age, so a team of soldiers is sent to retrieve them but, as to be expected, not all survive. And to make matters worse, when they're able to get back to the Present, something prehistoric returns with them.

REVIEW: Ever since I can remember, I've loved dinosaurs – pretty much my favorite thing, ever. So whenever a movie comes out with dinosaurs in it, no matter how good or bad, I have to check it out. But when one of those movies is made by none other then my favorite low budget production company The Asylum...well...I get pretty excited to check the thing out, especially since the only other dinosaur flick by them that I've seen, I really enjoyed (The Land That Time Forgot – never did a review of that one, but I may next time I do a re-watch of it). So when I heard that they had another dinosaur movie out there titled 100 Million BC, and starred none other then Tremors famer Michael Gross, I knew I had to check it out for review.

This movie starts off with a couple of mountain climbers finding a previously-undiscovered cave where there are cave paintings of humans interacting with dinosaurs, along with messages written on the wall alongside them. We then cut to a team of military soldiers arriving at some building in Los Angeles. We can tell right away that pretty much all of these characters are only in the movie to raise the body count up because none of them save for maybe one or two have anything even resembling characterization given to them during the course of the movie and most only have two or three lines. The two that do get just a smidgen of characterization – the team leader and one other one – are among the first two to be killed off when they travel back in time, leaving us stuck with the far-less interesting bland cardboard-cutout soldier characters.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. They get introduced to a military scientist played to perfection by Michael Gross of Tremors fame. Having played the character of Burt Gummer on Tremors and not really much else that I'm familiar with, I was really excited to hear he was in this movie, and he didn't disappoint. He played the role exactly as you would expect him to, and the character is one of the few fleshed-out characters in the movie. The only crappy thing about his role is that he wasn't given much to do other then stand around and talk. Even when they get to the past he mostly just stands there behind everyone while the other characters get in on the dinosaur action. Anyway, he briefs the soldiers on the situation: In the 1950's, they re-opened the top secret and legendary Philadelphia Experiment. Now on top of this being a dinosaur movie starring the actor of my favorite B-movie character, now they throw the Philadelphia Experiment into the blender as well! I'm a huge fan of the Philadelphia Experiment conspiracy and read up on anything that deals with it. This movie seems to be made up of all the things I love, so at this point I'm really digging it.

Burt Gummer...errr, sorry...Michael Gross's character goes on to explain that once again the experiment was a failure and resulted in the team of scientists working on it to disappear right before their eyes. They were never seen nor heard from again, so the project was once again shut down. That is, until the recent cave discovery shown in the intro, of which the messages written and paintings depicted on the wall were done by the scientists that went missing and was a message made by them. So now the military has re-opened the project once more in order to send a rescue team back into prehistoric times to find those missing people and bring them back home.

Upon arriving in prehistoric times via what seems like early unfinished Stargate effects, the military team (accompanied by Michael Gross) discover that - much like when the original Philadelphia Experiment happened and soldiers were fused to the bulkhead of the ship – one of their soldiers had been fused with a nearby tree. From there, things just go from bad to worse as they seem to run into danger almost right away and it hardly gives them more then two minutes at any given time to breathe. It actually got a bit annoying because I kind of wanted a few minutes for the characters to just relax a bit and get some characterization, but it was just one thing after another - deadly plants, a prehistoric crocodile, a pack of vicious raptors, killer pteranodons, and their biggest and most recurring problem: a Tyrannosaurus Rex, named Big Red due to his size and the dark blood-like color of his skin. If they're not being actively pursued by something, they're accidentally stumbling upon something else and each danger they come across shortens the size of their group more and more.

The biggest problem with all that, which bugged me even more then the consistency of the attacks, are the uneven effects. I don't mind bad CGI, and I don't mind bad puppetry, but for the love of God, just pick one and stick with it! As if it wasn't bad enough that the CGI was some of the worst I've ever seen (and disappointingly far below that of what I was expecting from The Asylum after seeing their low-budget version of The Land That Time Forgot), but they also used some of the worst dinosaur puppetry that I've ever seen (and that coming from a fan of the Carnosaur movies), and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason as to which effect was used at which time. Some shots were CGI, some were of puppets, and it went back forth at random. At least with the bad CGI shots, you can see the full animal; with the puppetry you only get to see super close-ups of part of its body, and only for about a split second before it cut away to the reactions of people around it – you don't even get a good look. They should have just picked one or the other instead of distractingly using both, and as much as I normally love practical effects over CGI, if this is how they're gonna be used then just give me the crappy CGI because at least it focuses on the creature for more then a second and we get a good view of the entire creature instead of just a close-up on its mouth or eye.

The few characters that are still alive by this point of the movie (among them of course is Michael Gross), get saved from the Mr. Dressup-reject pack of raptors by a ragtag group of cave-dwelling humans which, not surprisingly, turn out to be the survivors of the scientists stuck in the past – while it had been 50 years in our time, it's only been a few years for them. But a few years in a land as dangerous as this is far too long and it means there's only a few of them still alive. Among them is a scientist that turns out to be the older (but now much-younger) brother of Michael Gross' character, another scientist who likes to paint in his spare time (hence the cave drawings), and two girls that consist of a medic and a cook. After using spears and a make-shift bow-and-arrow set, they kill most of the raptors and drive away the rest, and bring the survivors of the rescue team back to their cave-home for the night, to rest up, eat, drink, and be merry.

Other then Michael Gross, I haven’t really cared about the other characters much since they're badly-written, badly-acted, and are around pretty much solely to be cannon fodder. Thankfully that changed with the introduction of these four new characters in almost every way – they're written really well, portrayed really well by the actors playing them, and each one gets a decent amount of proper characterization. There's even an oddly-emotional scene where Michael Gross is talking with the other scientist/painter guy under a star-filled prehistoric sky about how things 'back home' have changed and when the guy questions him on his family, Michael Gross has to break the news to him that things never really got good for them – his wife lived her life depressed at his mysterious disappearance and died a few years back from cancer, and his son grew up without any fatherly-guidance and thus was always into trouble with the law and grew up a delinquent. Quite heavy stuff for an Asylum film and it's stuff like that, that proves the scriptwriter had the chops to do excellent character-building scenes, so it's a mystery to me why only Michael Gross and these new four ended up getting any of that.

Anyway, the next morning everyone packs up and they all head back out to return to the portal entrance and get back home. What baffles me about this whole part of the movie, and doesn't make any sense that I can figure out, is that the trip back to the portal entrance took way longer. When they arrived it seemed to only take an hour at the most for them to get from there to the cave, but the trip back seems to be many hours, if not a couple of days worth of trekking. Not to mention the landscape looked completely different, almost as if they took a different route. But why take a different, much-longer route when you're in a hurry to get back and the other one would have you back in an hour, tops? It was another one of those script problems I didn't much care for and hampered my enjoyment a bit. Where it does match up with the first trek though, is that it's filled with non-stop danger with them running into one thing trying to kill them after another with nothing more then about 20 seconds of breathing space between. By the time they reach the portal entrance again, they've lost everyone who initially came with the rescue mission except one nameless soldier with zero personality (and sadly, that also includes Michael Gross' character, who sacrifices himself in order for the others to get back) so it's only the four people who had been stuck there to begin with that makes it back, and one other minor guy (who completely drops out of the movie shortly after returning to the Present Day). But of course they don't come alone, as the recurring Big Red chases them through the portal, and back into present-day Los Angeles, which leads into the final act of the movie.

This is a section of the movie that I both really love, and really dislike, but for different reasons. Much like in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and unlike everyone else in the world it seems, I really enjoy seeing dinosaurs rampaging through a city. There's just something fun to me about seeing a prehistoric animal from millions of years ago wrecking havoc in present day, and in that regard this portion of the movie doesn't disappoint. It's a nice contrast to see the Rex causing destruction in an environment of metal and glass, in comparison to seeing it reigning over a green jungle like we saw previous, and there are some really tense chase scenes in this part of the movie.

What I don't like about it though, is that it goes on way too long. Taking up an entire half of the movie at 45 minutes. This should have just been a quick 15-20 minute climax and not an entire half of the movie. Especially since the whole 45 minutes is made up of them either chasing after the Rex or being chased by the Rex. Almost all on-foot. That's right, right in the middle of Los Angeles (though a very empty Los Angeles by the looks of it) and they need to either get to the Rex quickly or get away from it quickly, and instead of using vehicles they feel using their own legs is the best method of quick transportation. I actually started feeling really bored by the time the final few minutes came around because everything was just so damn repetitive by that point.

This one had all the ingredients within it to be an instant Asylum Classic – a really good basic story, lots of dinosaurs, the Philadelphia Experiment, Michael Gross, and plenty of good shots of a tough hot chick in a tight tank top. How could they possibly mess something up that consists of all those awesome things? Well, a lot of really bad acting, too many characters that you just don't care about, the worst and most inconsistent effects I've ever laid eyes on (even when going by The Asylum's low standards), a climax that overstays its welcome, and some glaring problems on a script level all contributed to lowering my enjoyment of it, which is a shame because it could easily have been so much better with just a little tinkering here and there.

4/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Nemesis 2: Nebula (1995)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Imperial Entertainment

RUNTIME: 87 mins

FORMAT: VHS

PLOT: 76 years after the first movie, cyborgs have taken over the world and enslaved the human race. The human freedom fighters' scientists create a genetically-engineered superhuman as a secret weapon against the cyborgs, but during an ambush they must instead send her back in time to hide her, but she's soon followed by a cyborg bounty hunter.

REVIEW: I know everyone warned me to stay away from Nemesis 2: Nebula and the other Nemesis sequels, but I wanted to check them out for myself anyway. 1, Bad movies are my forte' so if you tell me to stay way from something because it's a bad movie – that just sparks my interest even more. 2, the original director/writer did all four Nemesis movies so that has me interested. 3, I'm a completest. When I sit down to watch a movie, no matter how bad the others are, if there are more in the series I have to watch them.

And to be honest? I didn't find this nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Sure, when compared to the first movie, it's not very good, but as a stand alone movie I found it quite entertaining and really, it has next to nothing to do with the first movie anyway beyond using is as a bit of background information on the state of the future, so it really has no need to be compared with it.

Following the events of the first movie, a full-on war started between cyborgs and humans in which the humans lost. After decades of slavery, scientists working with the human freedom fighters finally manage to create a superhuman – a female baby that will grow up to be stronger and faster then the average human, and have quick reflexes to fight back against the cyborgs with. However, shortly after being born, the labs are ambushed by a cyborg strike team and one human manages to escape with the baby (the baby is named Alex in memory of the 'human hero' from the start of the war; a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to the main character of the first movie). To escape, she steals a cyborg time traveling vehicle and ends up in East Africa in the 1980's - right in the middle of a civil war. When the female adult is killed by a group of rebels, the baby is taken in by a local tribe of Natives and is raised as one of their own. Cut forward to her early 20's and the cyborgs from the future finally managed to track her location in time and sends back a bounty hunter named Nebula, which heavily resembles a Predator rip-off, to track her down in the East African desert and kill her.

The Alex in this movie is played by a rather tough-looking and quite large female bodybuilder...which actually makes sense. After all, mankind's great weapon against the machines – a genetically-engineered superhuman - isn't going to exactly be small, thin as a stick, and meek. This isn't the sleek-and-sexy-looking Resident Evil or Underworld franchises, this is the low-budget dark and gritty Nemesis franchise. And since they hired her based off her size and stature...well, her acting (or lack there-of. Seriously, she hardly has any lines in the entire movie) leaves a bit to be desired. But she wasn't hired for her acting ability and her character wasn't genetically-engineered for a good conversation, so it makes sense. Both her and her character are in the movie for purely one reason: to kick cyborg ass. And in that regard, she does it perfectly.

Other then her, the only other main character really is the silent-but-deadly Bounty Hunter creature. Despite being called a cyborg, it comes across much more as some kind of flesh-and-blood creature or alien then it does a mechanical robot, and it talks even less then Alex does. That is to say, apart from some growls, snarls, and roars, there are only two scenes in the entire movie where it actually speaks – and oddly enough to great comedic effect (whether on-purpose or not). When it does speak, it's with a fluent British accent, totally going against the animalistic beast-like nature it was portrayed with during the entire movie. It also seemed to shop at the same Army Surplus store as the Predators from the Predator movies; it can bend light to make itself look near-invisible or distort your vision when you look at it or something like that (never really made clear what that effect was all about), it can record and playback video and audio, it can change the style of view it has, and it has a shoulder cannon that fires blue energy blasts. With it being a bounty hunter, it's also an expert hunter and tracker. But in it's very short defense, at least it's design was a bit original and it didn't really look much like a Predator. Although we hardly get to see it beyond a quick-moving blue blur for most of the movie, until a few good shots of it at the very end during the climatic fight.

Where-in the first movie we got many different kinds of scenery; post-apocalyptic wasteland, extensive city, small town, Japanese jungle – This one, except the first five minutes which takes place in a post-apocalyptic Cyborg-controlled city (and is made up almost entirely of re-used stock footage from the first movie), is all set pretty much in one location – the East African desert. It makes the movie feel a lot more small-scale then it's predecessor. Still, I actually liked the desert landscape, if for nothing more then it didn't give Alex many places to run and hide, thus leading to more kick-ass action scenes. The movie didn't have much of a plot other then Alex trying to escape the bounty hunter, coming across a group of people (depending on the group, some try to help her while others try to capture her for their own reasons), said group of people get killed, Alex tries to escape the Bounty Hunter again, repeat. When a movie is like that, the action scenes are really all it has going for it and thankfully there are plenty, though none of them reach the level of awesome that the action scenes from the first movie were at, but they're still pretty good in their own low-budget right.

There are some aspects that make no sense at all though – like if the Cyborgs have time travel devices, and they finally managed to track down the point in time that Alex was sent back to, then why send the Nebula bounty hunter to 20 years later, instead of to the point where the baby initially arrived and thus was still a baby instead of a superhuman cyborg-killing adult? But in movies such as these, you're not really supposed to think too much about the gaping plotholes, I guess.

My one real big issue however, apart from the above-mentioned inconsistencies when it comes to the Nebula bounty hunter, is that the movie ends without any real ending. Alex kills the bounty hunter and then drives off in a jeep. The End. She's still stuck in the past while her present/our future burns under the control of the cyborg menace, and they will no doubt continue to send cyborg troops back in time to kill her when this one fails to return. I hear that Nemesis 3: Time Lapse is made entirely of scrapped footage from this movie – they had filmed way too much and had to cut much of it (including many characters and entire plots) in order to get this one down to a reasonable runtime and so they used all that cut footage to make another movie. I'm not sure how well that will play out on-screen, but I'm looking forward to finding out.

7/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Almighty Thor (2011)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: The Asylum

RUNTIME: 90 mins

FORMAT: TV

PLOT: When Loki invades Asgard and kills Oden, Oden sends the Hammer of Invincibility - the mystical item Loki is after - to Earth. Now Oden's immature son Thor must get to it before Loki does or the entire Universe will be destroyed.

REVIEW: I always anticipate each new Asylum movie, and Almighty Thor was no different in that regard. Some such as Battle of Los Angeles turn out excellent while some such as Dragonquest turn out really crappy. With Asylum movies, you're never really quite sure what to expect in terms of quality as they fluctuate from movie to movie. Where their last movie I saw, Battle of Los Angeles, was amazing IMO, this one...not so much. Arriving just in time to cash in on the big budget Hollywood movie Thor from Marvel, which Asylum does quite often and always to timing perfection, Almighty Thor is their very first foray into superhero films, but unfortunately it's a prime example of one of their lesser-quality ventures.

For example, the acting – whooo boy. Asylum may not have the best acting, but even by their own low standards it hasn't been this bad in years. Granted, Cody Deal (the fellow who plays Thor) does improve a bit once they get him out of Asgard and down to Earth, and the guy that plays Loki is excellent as the villain, but everyone else is pretty horrible. Kevin Nash of wrestling fame (playing Thor's father Oden) seemed to be reading from cue cards the entire time and Patricia Velasquez from the first two The Mummy movies (playing a warrior Valkyrie guardian of Asgard here) had such a thick accent, you could hardly understand most of her lines. And none of them – including Cody Deal – should have ever attempted to do the old medieval-style of speech. That's a hard way of talking to pull off realistically (even big budget movies rarely pull it off well), and I'm a firm believer that it's way to distracting when not done well, so if you can't then don't even try. Seriously, it made me groan whenever somebody other then Loki spoke. Luckily though, they seem to mostly drop that style of speech once they get to Earth (though it doesn't make any sense as to why their speech would change). Even the horrible botching of the speaking-style aside, the guy who plays Loki is the only actor in the movie that does anything even resembling a decent job, totally stealing the show every time. The movie is almost worth watching just for him alone.

And while I'm on the topic of Loki, there are a few things I didn't really understand about him - for one, there is no backstory whatsoever given on him. Why is he so evil? Why was he locked away underground? If he could escape from Hell so damn easily (with reinforcements no less) then why wait until now and not escape sooner? We had no backstory or motivation really given on him, and I hate when villains are written so lazily with no care given as to giving us any proper information on them other then 'They're bad, so you have to hate them.' Adding to the confusion of Loki, is that staff/wand thing he carries around – there's no rules with it. It can literally do ANYTHING he wants it to. His magic seems to work without rhyme or reason and just does whatever the situation calls for and whatever he needs it to do with no restrictions. If that's the case, then why does he have such trouble taking over Asgard and then Earth? I hate when movies introduce a magical item like that, with no rules for it whatsoever and it can literally do whatever is needed of it for that scene; It's piss poor lazy writing.

The fight choreography is also pretty crappy, moving at such a deliberately slow pace that it's plainly obvious that they're just acting the fight out instead of actually fighting. Most of what we get is just Thor and Loki swinging a couple swords or a giant hammer at each other, dodging, swinging again, blocking, swinging a third time, dodging, then escaping. The fight choreography in Battle of Los Angeles was better then that, and all that had was a chick swinging a sword at a CGI alien ship! I was really disappointed in the lack of care given to the action in this so-called action movie. It wouldn't have even bothered me so much if this was of a different genre, but billing itself as a fantasy action, and then dropping the ball on the action part, is just disappointing.

I can't do an Asylum review without mentioning the special effects. In some cases such as Battle of Los Angeles and Transmorphers: Fall of Man, they're pretty good. In other cases such as Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus and this movie, they're simply not. The giant Hellhounds and Demon Worms - they actually looked pretty good and had a decent design, but everything else from shots of burning fires and crumbling buildings, to even just exterior shots of Oden's castle - that stuff all looked low caliber, even for an Asylum flick (and why they felt the need to CGI a castle and not shoot on-location at one is beyond me. Even Full Moon shoots on-location at castles, and their movies are of even lower budgets then Asylum ones). With their recent movies showing that they really are capable of much better work, I'm really disappointed to see that it's not as good here as it is in their other recent flicks, and that they did things in CGI, badly, that could have easily been done to much better effect with practical work.

All of that aside though, I can enjoy a badly-acting bad-effects-fueled movie as long as there's a good story. So what about the story? Well that's what I was asking for the majority of the movie as well. There is next to no story here. Hell, the entire first half is nothing but Loki chasing Thor and his lady-friend through a forest. THAT'S IT. For 40 minutes. It's not until they get to Earth in the second half that anything even resembling a story comes into play as the two sides race to get the Hammer of Invincibility first. And even then I was left scratching my head as to why not one person seemed to notice these people running around the city in medieval garb.

One aspect of the script that I did like however - though I know most people didn't – was one very awesome action scene where Thor is running down the street, firing off a machine gun. Most people hate it when a classic Greek character or an oldtime-warrior is seen in the present using modern weapons. I personally love it. It makes sense; they're in modern times, so of course they're going to use modern weapons. Granted, it was only the one really short scene, but it was very cool none the less, and maybe if the other action scenes had more of that instead of a couple swords or obviously-fake hammers being banged around slowly then they would have been more thrilling and entertaining.

One thing I have to really hand it to them for though, and it's something I've been noticing on most of Asylum's more recent movies in the last couple years – the amazing cinematography. I don't know if they hired someone new in the last year or so for this or what, but whatever the story on that is – it's working, so I hope they keep it up in their future endeavors as well. There is a distinct change in the cinematography between the Asgard scenes and the Earth scenes, with Asgard (being the home of our main characters) coming across as normal, but then a smooth blue filter over the Earth scenes to make it seem almost foreign and alien, helping us look at Earth almost with the eyes of someone who had never been there before, and that's a stylistic choice I can really appreciate.

One last thing I really liked was most of the final 15 minutes, once Loki declares all-out war on Earth and his Hellhounds and Demon Worms show up to start causing massive destruction while he destroys the Tree of Life and causes natural disasters that lead to global destruction. I wish there was much more of this kind of stuff, because I felt that's when the movie really started getting genuinely entertaining, but unfortunately it was too little, too late.

All in all, I have to be honest and say I didn't really enjoy this one. There were a few things I loved (the actor playing Loki, the excellent cinematography, and the final 15 minutes), but even more I hated such as horrible acting, horrible effects, and a dreadful script with no plot and that doesn't explain ANYTHING (How did Thor know Loki was on Earth in the first place? How did Thor know where to find Loki on Earth? Why was Thor such an immature brat and seemed to never learn from his mistakes and always refuse to listen to anyone that isn't himself? How exactly did Thor escape from Hell once Loki sent him there? Plus all of the previously-mentioned stuff in regards to Loki and his magical staff/wand thing). The bad far outweighs the good with this one and I can only hope that I enjoy Asylum's next venture more then I did Almighty Thor.

3/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Battle of Los Angeles (2011)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: The Asylum

RUNTIME: 91 mins

FORMAT: Netflix

PLOT: Without warning an alien fleet invades Earth and starts destroying Los Angeles, and it's up to a ragtag group of soldiers to survive the onslaught and find a way to save the day.

REVIEW: A word of warning before I go into this review: This is not a review for the big-budget Hollywood summer blockbuster Battle: Los Angeles. This is a review of the low budget mockbuster knock-off Battle of Los Angeles, made by The Asylum.

Asylum, as much as I love them, tends to turn out movies faster then I can keep up with. I nab them on DVD or BluRay as quickly as I can, but then they sit on my shelf for months while I try to make time to actually watch them. Battle of Los Angeles aired on SyFy before it hit DVD, but since I live in Canada I wasn't able to catch it on TV (we don't have access to SyFy here) and have been putting off buying the DVD because Asylum has confirmed that it will be hitting BluRay (though it's been delayed). Then I was browsing the new arrivals of Netflix Canada's Instant Watch and noticed it was available there – and in HD! So I canceled my plans for the evening and loaded the movie up to finally watch (truth be told said plans involved simply cleaning my apartment and going for a bath, so it's not like I had anything better to do).

To be 100% completely honest, I was totally enthralled from the opening seconds, right to the end; the phrase 'Action-Packed' has never been properly attributed to a movie better than it is with this one. The movie opens on the mothership already hovering over Los Angeles with a squad of fighter jets heading towards it. Within 60 seconds, the action starts and it literally does not let up until the credits start rolling some 90-odd minutes later. If nothing else, this movie really captured the hecticness of war, never giving the characters a proper chance to just stop and catch their breaths, and never giving us, the viewer, a chance to even blink. From fighter jets attacking the mothership, to alien fighter ships attacking the jets and the city in general, to soldiers doing battle against stationary alien projectile turrets on the ground, to killer robots, to one-eyed hot samurai women taking out alien fighter ships with her katana sword, this movie throws everything and the kitchen sink at us, and oddly enough – it all works. The only problem I really have with the script is at the very end when our heroes bring down the mothership and make it crash, it crashes right into the middle of Los Angeles, sending up giant explosions everywhere. It did (what looked like anyway) more damage to the city then the aliens themselves did during the actual invasion. But that's just one minor problem at the very end, and it's more of a visual issue then one on the script-level.

On top of turning out a mostly well-written script, the scriptwriter also knew his shit. Not only did he seem well-versed on the original Battle of Los Angeles event from the 1940's, but he also seemed to be educated quite thoroughly on alien mythology in general, incorporating MJ-12 lore into it, which I feel not enough alien/UFO movies do. Upon researching, I found out that Mark Atkins (both the scriptwriter and director of this movie) actually had made a short film in his filmschool days, on this very topic, so it doesn't surprise me too much that he did such a good job here.

Of course more works here then just the script. There have been a few Asylum movies that have had great scripts, but still failed over all. It takes a combination of many successful aspects and something else that stood out to me while watching are the effects. Yes, ok, they suck...for a normal movie. But this isn't a normal movie – this is a low budget movie made by a low budget company and thus, the effects need to be judged on those merits and going by those merits, the effects rocked. They are easily the best effects I've seen to date from The Asylum, and leaps and bounds better then the effects from any other SyFy Original Movie of the Week. Both the extensive CGI work on the spaceships and Alien Lord creature, as well as the practical effects work for the captive alien - it all looked good. If this is the direction that Asylum is going for their effects work in future releases, I say bring it on. They've certainly improved from their early days. The only downside, and it's just a minor quibble, is that there were a few times we saw the exact same effect shot re-used over and over and it was just a tad distracting, but that's understandable considering the small size of the budget and how good everything looked.

To accompany the awesome script and better-then-expected effects are well-written characters and the stand-out performances of them. The movie is filled with all sorts of characters, but I'll only directly mention the very main ones because really – even the minor characters were written-well and performed perfectly by the actors portraying them. First up we have Kel from Keenan and Kel playing the timid unsure-of-himself army private that has to take charge and lead the fight against the aliens. Honestly, I wasn't too sure of him at first, being the weakest actor in the movie and not being very convincing playing the timid role. But once he started having to take charge, I liked him a lot more and felt he fit that kind of role much better, and by the end I was totally behind him, especially once he started piloting the captured alien attack ship and took the fight to the alien mothership, Independance Day-style. Alongside him is one badass eyepatch-wearing sword-wielding hot chick in a tight jumpsuit, who kicks ass and takes names. Not only can she bring down alien attack ships with nothing more then her skill with a katana sword, but she can order people around and spew lines with the best of them. Easily the best actor in the movie and totally stole the show almost every time she was on screen. Also, there's a tough-as-nails Michelle Rodriquez-wannabe fighter pilot that ends up crossing paths with Kel and his squad of soldiers and joins them once her jet gets grounded. That is one woman you do not want to piss off, and if trying to channel Michelle Rodriquez is what her goal was, she met it perfectly. Other then them, there are a few random other military characters but none really worth mentioning, as well as a couple Government scientists once they reach the secret underground facility. But unlike most Asylum movies, even the small roles for the minor side characters were played by mostly-capable actors that did surprisingly well with the roles. A highlight of them is an old army Sargent that barks orders alongside insults and threats and is so bad ass, he brings down an alien attack ship with just his pistol, then hijacks the weapons off that to shoot down another ship.

The set designs are also really well-created. We have the streets of a ruined city, a desert outpost, a dimly-lit secret underground government facility where they're keeping a kidnapped alien, and the corridors and inner-workings of the alien mothership – it all looked really well-done and believable. You can tell Asylum pumped a larger budget into this one then normal, and not a penny went to waste.

When all was said and done, I had had so much fun watching this little gem and despite being a low budget direct-to-video cheap knock-off, I actually enjoyed it way more then the bigger-budgeted version Battle: Los Angeles. Battle of Los Angeles never once took itself too seriously, and the creators knew what it was while making it and don't try to deliver on anything it's not. The acting, the effects, the script...it all adds various levels of cheese that makes watching this movie, and other mockbusters like it, so much fun to watch while chugging back on a few beers some weekend evening, which is more then what can be said for the crappy Hollywood version.

This is, without a doubt, Asylum's best production to date.

10/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Nemesis (1992)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Imperial Entertainment

RUNTIME: 95 mins

FORMAT: VHS

PLOT: In the future, where the average person now has various cybernetic enhancements, one cop questions his humanity and leaves the Force in pursuit of a major conspiracy that could change the world forever.

REVIEW: After recently watching Ghost in the Shell 2.0 and Blade Runner, as well as the Mystery Science Theater version of the mucho-low budget movie Future War, I was still in the mood to watch more movies of that kind, and a person on Twitter recommended that I watch and review Nemesis – a low budget 1992 sci-fi/action flick directed by Albert Pyun, who some of you may know as the director and writer of many low budget movies of various genres throughout the 80's and 90's, which include but is not limited to Alien from L.A., Dollman, Cyborg, Kickboxer 2 and 4, and The Sword and the Sorcerer.

I searched and searched but couldn't find the DVD of the movie for a reasonable price so settled instead for buying a super-cheap VHS copy and dusting off my old VCR to watch it. I forgot how awesomely oldskool VHS tapes are; back when you had to watch 10 minutes+ of trailers at the beginning and could only skip them by fast forwarding, back when lines would come up on the screen and you either had to fix the tracking or just deal with it due to damage on the tape. I'm thinking I should check out some more of these older low budget flicks on VHS instead of DVD or BluRay, cause if anything I think it added to the overall grittiness of the movie.

As for the movie itself – while not perfect, it was pretty darn enjoyable. It was way ahead of it's time, dealing with aspects that wouldn't be made popular until Ghost in the Shell and the The Matrix came along. Alex Rain is the name of the main character here and he's a human detective with quite a large number of cybernetic enhancements, but while on the trail of some cyber hackers led by his ex-partner he starts to uncover a much larger conspiracy that involves people in power being secretly killed and replaced by cyborg duplicates in a move by cyborgs to take over the world and turn humans into their slaves. Along the way, he constantly has to keep getting upgraded with more mechanical parts due to the state he's left in after some of the action scenes don't go his way. These tuneups have become so commonplace that he starts to worry about just how human he is or isn't anymore. At what point does he stop being human and starts being just a machine?

The movie starts off on a 10-minute long action scene in the rubble of Los Angeles that doesn't go even 5 seconds without gunfire or explosions happening, and that kind of fast pace doesn't let up much until the credits roll at the end. The entire thing is filled with non-stop well-choreographed and over-the-top action scenes, and intense elaborate shoot-outs (some of which have been outright copied by future movies such as Underworld), that culminates in a massive action sequence in the jungle that would make even Rambo and the Predators jealous for missing out on. To make those sequences even better, everything is done using practical effects and thus these action scenes were, to me anyway, more interesting to watch then almost any big budget Hollywood CGI-generated monstrosity from this day in age. Only detractor is one scene towards the end uses some really bad stop-motion for a fight scene between Alex Rain and a T-800 ripoff in the cargo area, and on the outside of, a futuristic jet as it zooms through the sky.

When one of those drooling-good action scenes isn't happening, there is still plenty going on to keep you interested such as nudity and robotic cyborg parts being displayed in gory fashion. It also takes the time between action scenes to set this world up and give us most of our information in regards to the way the world is and who all the major players of the movie are. However, it certainly doesn't help that pretty much all of the actors are really bad and the lead actor has such a thick Jean-Claude Van-Damme style accent that it's hard to pick out what he's saying a lot of the time, and when you can understand it, it's very stilted and broken up. However, the most important lines he will say – some classic hilarious one-liners – are crystal clear for all to enjoy.

In this future world, most of the world seems to lay in ruins. Despite the fact that it's established early on that people still live in Los Angeles and places such as hotels are still in business (since the first action scene starts off in one), most exterior shots show the city in ruins, with crumbling buildings and massive debris everywhere, and a desolate desert wasteland closing in on all sides. Adding to the atmosphere of an almost post-apocalyptic world is the fact that every exterior shot throughout the first half of the movie has a reddish tint added to it, giving the effect that the sun is dying. At least until Alex Rain travels to Japan, and then for some reason the sun and landscape are normal there, so maybe it's only America that's on the brink of being wiped out. That's something that's never really made clear.

Musical scores could potentially make or break a movie and luckily here it really fits. It's kind of an almost Native American style music mixed with detective noir kind of music and oddly enough, that fits really well with a futuristic cyberpunk flick, though you wouldn't believe it to hear someone say so. Then once Alex Rain goes to Japan, the music changes more to traditional Japanese-style music. Right from the opening moments, the musical score really stands out and sets the mood perfectly, and never once feels out of place during any scene of the movie. More often then not, it's the stand-out aspect in just about every scene. I find that low budget movies tend to have the best, most over-looked scores and it sucks that they almost never get officially released like bigger-budget theatrical movie scores do.

There's not really much more I can say about it. That's why I hate reviewing action movies, because I'm not able to articulate my thoughts as well as I can when there's some big monster stomping around or an alien invasion force going on that I can focus large chunks of my review on. However I told some people that I'd review this one, so I kind of had to follow through. I've been told that there are three sequels to this movie, but to stay away because none of them have anything at all to actually do with this movie and all are quite bad. However, being the sucker for bad movies that I am, and the fact that they're all written and directed by the same guy as this movie, I think I won't listen and will go track them down and watch them anyway, and since I've reviewed this movie, you can expect eventual reviews of the sequels as well.

9/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Raptor (2001)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: New Concorde 

RUNTIME: 81 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: A small town Sheriff and a Wildlife Officer look into some grisly murders and discover that not only is a dinosaur on the loose, but it came from the nearby Government laboratory and they go to investigate, but only end up making things go from bad to worse as they accidentally cause all the Carnosaurs...err, I mean dinosaurs... in the lab complex to get loose.

REVIEW: I had really wanted to see Carnosaur 4 get made for the simple fact that I thought Carnosaur 3 was easily the weakest in the series and would have liked to see the series go out on a higher note. While Carnosaur 4 was never made, another movie was brought to my attention in it's place: Raptor. Made by all the same people and acts as kind of an unofficial Carnosaur 4 (apparently they couldn't get the Rights to the title, for whatever reason since it was made by the same company and people, however it's even regarded as Carnosaur 4 in parts of the world). As soon as the DVD arrived in the mail, I couldn't wait to pop it in and check this Raptor out and get started on a review, fully excited to get back into the world of Carnosaur.

Oh boy. This movie is bad. Even by my very low standards.

First off, there is no new dinosaur footage in this movie - every single scene with a dinosaur in it is just stock footage from one of the three Carnosaur movies, and while that stock footage was integrated pretty well in the first half of the movie, the second half was botched all to hell, combining shots from each movie together into the same scene, despite the fact that they don't match up at all. One part has a famous Tyrannosaurus vs Construction vehicle scene that this series is known for...except it's made up of footage from both Carnosaur and Carnosaur 2, despite the fact that the construction vehicle used in the first movie was different then the construction vehicle used in the second, but this movie treats them the same, so you'll see a shot of the Tyrannosaurus Rex and vehicle fighting, cut to a reaction shot of the person, then cut back to the Tyrannosaurus Rex and vehicle fighting again...except now the vehicle is suddenly a different one, even though it's supposed to be the same. The second half of the movie is filled with that kind of stuff. Up until that point, I actually didn't mind the use of stock footage as, understandably, the props and suits had gone into disrepair and couldn't be used in a 4th movie, and said stock footage was integrated pretty well. Hell, they even got an actor from the first movie back for this for a few scenes, just so they could re-use his death scene (although he is considerably older here then in the re-used stock footage, but it's the attempt and effort that counts). But then the second half of the movie comes along and does the above-mentioned horrible botching every step of the way and it just gets gross. There are quite a few scenes where we see someone get attacked, but then we cut to stock footage from one of the Carnosaur movies and suddenly it's a completely different person being chomped down on by the dinosaur in place of the one we were just seeing, and in a completely different location then the one the character was just in. It really made no sense whatsoever and was some of the most horrid use of stock footage that I've ever seen (in one scene from Carnosaur 3 used here, we see life boats and a life preserver hung on the wall...yet the characters in this movie are in the middle of an underground basement-level of a Government facility in the middle of the desert...). To further the point, when the dinosaurs start running amok in the facility, the Government sends in not one team, not two teams, but three different, unrelated, teams of Black Op soldiers to deal with it, so that they can use footage from both Carnosaur 2 and Carnosaur 3, where the government/military characters were dressed wearing different uniforms. And one of these teams is dressed in...rain jackets. Yes, rain jackets. No explanation is given in-movie at all for sending in three unrelated teams, nor why one team is dressed in rain jackets despite the fact that it's not raining outside.

And it's a real shame too, because apart from that stock footage debacle, this movie actually had some potential. It's more or less a remake of the first Carnosaur movie, but minus the dino-birthing disease and with more likable lead characters (the Sheriff is actually played by none other then Eric Roberts, oddly enough, though even saying that he's phoning it in may be giving too much credit). And IMO, this movie actually worked the mad scientist angle better then the original Carnosaur. Here, the guy (named Dr. Hyde if you can believe that) was actually making intelligent dinosaurs at the request of the Government to use in overseas warfare in a project titled Jurassic Storm, but then he decided to go rogue and wanted to instead sell them to the highest foreign bidder, but before he can get that far they break loose and start causing havoc first in the nearby small desert town, and then in the facility itself.

To flesh out Eric Roberts' Sheriff character, he has a teen daughter (played by a porn star that looks almost as old as him) that sets him on the path of figuring everything out, as she and her boyfriend get attacked by the escaped Raptor and results in her getting hospitalized and the Sheriff wanting revenge on whatever attacked her, which leads him to the nearby government facility. To aid him along the way is a Wildlife Control Officer (played by a stripper, who has since gone on to star in many movies of this elk). At first they think the creature may be an escaped cougar, which is a subplot not in the original Carnosaur movie but is in the original Carnosaur novel that the series is based on, so it surprised me they included it here, and a surprise that is more then welcomed. If the movie had continue to follow the path of the original book, even the stock footage may not have seemed so bad for me because that book was pure awesome. Adding to the cast, just over halfway through we get two teams of Black Op military characters, and then a third team shortly after that. Most, like in Carnosaur 3, are just background cannon fodder and don't even have names or more then one or two lines of dialog, but there is a couple that are given personality and they're pretty fun to watch, especially the hard-as-nails swear-loving Boston-native leader of the 'Black Team'.

Also in it's favor is lots of good gore (granted it's all from stock footage of the other movies, but they could have gone near-goreless like the third movie did, so props have to be given there), and surprisingly they got James Horner to do the music. What kind of giant ass favor he owed these people, I'm not sure, but it was good to see his name there because the music is one of the movie's strongest points and is really befitting of a much better movie then the one the music ultimately ended up being for. Often times I'd zone out of what was happening on-screen and just listened to the awesome music.

There's honestly not a whole lot more to say, since most of it is just a clip show of the previous movies, which I've already reviewed. If this movie had been filmed using the actual props and costumes of the previous movies instead of horribly badly-integrated stock footage, it actually would have been a really good Carnosaur 4 or Carnosaur remake, as a lot of the actual plot itself was pretty good.. Unfortunately the use of stock footage to the degree they use it, especially in the second-half of the movie when all the dinosaurs take over the facility and all those random Special Black Op teams are sent in, as well as some of the newly-shot story aspects that had to be there in order to have the stock footage scenes make sense, really brings it down to not even being enjoyable on a so-bad-it's-good level, as it's just too damn distracting and really takes you out of the movie, instantly making you think of the better Carnosaur movies.

2/10 rooms in the Psych Ward
 

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